


We have to create. It is the only thing louder than destruction.

by queenofthefallenfics



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Depressed Booker | Sebastien le Livre, F/F, Found Family, Gen, Hopeful Ending, I don't know how to tag this obviously, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Immortal Wives Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, M/M, Minor Character Death, Origin Story, no beta we die like men, they were the founders au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:41:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26951566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthefallenfics/pseuds/queenofthefallenfics
Summary: “Where else did you teach? Ilvermorny? Hogwarts? Uagadou?” Nile asked.“We’ve visited, more or less, all the schools when they were young,” Nicky told her. “Except, well, Hogwarts. That . . . was tricky.”“What do you mean?”Joe stood up, gesturing for Nile to come with him.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache & Booker | Sebastien & Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf & Nicky | Nicolò, Andy | Andromache & Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Joe | Yusuf al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova & Quynh | Noriko, Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nile Freeman, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nile Freeman, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 12
Kudos: 112





	We have to create. It is the only thing louder than destruction.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Andrea Gibson's "Yellowbird."
> 
> I don't know The Old Guard or Harry Potter, btws.

Nile walked out of the Leaky Cauldron with her hood pulled low over her face. With her long braids, the purple beads threaded through them clinking as she walked, and flat stare, she looked like a proper Shafiq in the right light. And looking right in the right light was . . . well, _right_ , she reasoned, almost laughing at herself. Then Nile shook her head and forced herself to focus, she couldn’t be caught unawares again.

The last time she was, some blood purist prick hit her in the back with some version of the Stunning Spell that flared green and instantly made her unconscious, leaving her in an alleyway off of Knockturn.

And it was some British Stunning Spell variant, something she didn’t learn at MACUSA, not yet. Her sabbatical was, of course, not so much a sabbatical as a poor excuse to go to England to help out her father’s family. Her father, Truman, was the son of a Squib who was the first of four children of the Shafiq family; her grandfather was sent away to America when Grindlewald was at the height of his power and had met a Beauvais daughter and fell in love.

Usep Shafiq often commented that it was easier in America for people like them: Squibs and muggle-borns. After all, Wizarding America was much more open-minded, a mentality that was done to spite No-Maj America. But in Britain it was different. So much more different. After all, Nile wouldn’t be here, fighting against blood supremacists as if they were so much better white supremacists if it wasn’t different. The only thing that was different is that Wizarding Britain cared about the quality of your blood, rather than the color of your—

A wand in her face quickly snapped her out of her thoughts.

Nile stopped short and looked at the wand ( _walnut, perhaps cherry?_ ) pointed right at her chest. She looked up the length of the wand ( _maybe 10, 10.5 inches_ ) and into flat, gray eyes.

“Freeman? Come with me.”

Nile didn’t do anything for a moment, she just stared at this woman as she tried to figure out who she was and what she wanted with her. She had no accent, her left arm had fallen down to show a bare forearm, and she wore No-Maj combat boots, not the popular dragonhide boots that British wix preferred.

“Who are you?” Nile asked, not used to seeing another American like her in this place.

“Andromache the Scythian,” she said, teeth bared in a strange smile that clashed with her flat eyes. Her wand flashed red and Nile was unconscious.

When she came to, it was in a small bed with a hard mattress with impossibly soft pillows and a blanket with an Ever-Warm charm on it. She heard voices and clattering, muffled by the door, but she thought that she heard the woman . . . Andromache the Scythian say something. It took Nile a moment to remember Scythia’s history and when she did, she wondered what one of them was doing out in the modern world. They were one of the most reclusive magical communities in the world, if not the _most_ reclusive. They were so reclusive, as a matter of fact, that the No-Maj world thought they didn’t exist anymore. But if there was a Scythian in the modern world . . . maybe it wasn’t the best for Nile to get mixed up with these people.

She looked around for her wand and things but didn’t see them anywhere. Nile took a deep, calming breath and then pushed the blanket off of her, swinging her legs around to the side of the bed. The moment her socked feet touched the ground the voices stopped for a moment, then started up again with two loud laughs. Nile flushed, certain they were laughing about her, and grabbed her cloak where it was draped over a chair and left the room.

She followed a hallway that was littered with different paintings until she got to a kitchen where the Scythian was sitting, surrounded by three men. They all looked at her and Nile met their gaze evenly.

“Where am I?” she asked. “Where are my things?”

“Right there,” said one man, his voice thick with an Italian accent. “And you are still in England, do not worry, Miss Freeman.”

Nile wandlessly Summoned her bag and riffled through it, making sure none of them had taken anything. And, besides her missing phone, everything was where she had put it. “Where’s my phone?” she asked.

“Ah, you won’t need that anymore,” the blond man said, fiddling with a flask.

“I doubt that very much,” Nile said. “Give it to me. Now.”

“Just like Booker said, you won’t need that anymore,” the Scythian told her.

Nile glared at all of them, tasting anger and electricity on her tongue. Booker, the blond man, was drinking out of a flask now and, from his bloodshot eyes, did it frequently. The Italian man was playing footsie with the last one, who alternated between looking at the Italian with wide, lovestruck eyes, and Nile with a smile. The Scythian brushed some crumbs off her mouth and stood up.

“As I said before, my name is Andromache, but you can call me Andy. You know Booker, Joe is the one with curls, and Nicky is the last one,” she said, introducing them all. Each of the men gave Nile a wave of some sort when their name was called.

“Who are you people?”

Booker and Joe shared a laugh as Nicky just pushed a chair out, inviting her to take a seat. Nile sat down and placed her bag on her lap, one hand wrapped around her wand handle, still in the bag.

“We’re a group of fighters, just like you,” the Scythian— _Andy_ , said. “We fight for Mundane’s and wizards.”

Nile hadn’t heard of anyone using ‘Mundane’ as a term for the No-Maj’s; ‘Muggles’ was the current preferred term in England and, even translated, most of the European wix communities didn’t use ‘Mundane.’ _So maybe it was popular in Scythia_ , Nile guessed.

“There are hundreds, thousands of fighters,” Nile countered. “What makes me so special?”

Andy smiled, raised her wand, and said, “ _Avada Kedavra_.”

The world flashed green. What felt like seconds later, Nile jolted backward in her chair, falling over herself and landing in a heap on the floor. She jumped to her feet, wand pointing at all of them. A beat passed and she lowered her arm, the dulled sensations of relief-confusion-shock washing over her. Another beat passed and Nile picked the chair back up again and collapsed into it, dropping her head into her hands.

“What am I?” she whispered.

“You haven’t figured it out yet?” Andy said. “You can’t die.”

Nile looked between the others—that meant . . . “The rest of you are immortals, too?” she asked, somewhere between shocked and horrified.

“Welcome to our little . . . club,” Booker said, dark irony threading his words. He was nudged slightly by Andy and just shrugged, taking another sip from his flask.

“This can’t be happening,” Nile said. “You- you- you must have poisoned me! Or- or given me something to think I’m immortal, but not.”

“Oh no, you are,” Joe said, giving her a wide smile.

“And the rest of you are, too?”

“Yes,” Nicky said.

“And you’re all wix, too?” Nile asked, confused.

“Yes,” Andy said, “but there isn’t a correlation between the two.”

“How do you know?” Nile asked.

“There used to be one of us,” Andy said, “who wasn’t. This idea of power only being with those who are magical is the work of a fool.”

Nile wanted to ask questions about the immortal who apparently died ( _isn’t that a damn oxymoron?_ ) but bit her tongue. Looking around the table, it didn’t seem like any of them were actually immortal, but she wasn’t in the mood to try it out. She did recognize them all, vaguely, from some strange dream she had, but it was also probably just coincidence. She had met hundreds of people in her life, there were bound to be cases of passers-by showing up in dreams sometimes ( _but this was a couple days ago_ ). 

Nicky sent a plate of food over to her with a flick on his fingers and Nile looked at it suspiciously. She couldn’t see anything wrong with the meat and rice—in fact, it looked pretty good actually. She took a cautious bite and couldn’t taste anything wrong with it, but then looked up. “I can survive anything?” she asked. “Regardless of whether it’s a curse or poison or a No-Maj weapon?” 

“Anything,” Booker confirmed. “I died fighting for Napoleon; Nicky and Joe killed each other in a duel. Death is . . . the same, whether you’re a Muggle or not.”

“Napoleon?” Nile repeated, unable to believe this guy, maybe late 30s, early 40s, fought with fucking _Napoleon_. “But that’s . . .”

“We had our duel in the 900s,” Joe said, as her silence drew longer and longer.

“Our first duel,” Nicky corrected him, eyes gleaming.

“Our first duel,” Joe repeated, eyes soft.

Nile looked at the two of them, then looked at Booker and Andy, brows raised in a quiet question. “Yeah, they’re like this all the time,” Booker told her. “You . . . don’t get used to it, but you just learn how to block it out.”

Everyone laughed and Nile could practically feel how comfortable they were with each other, able to hand out love and jokes in equal measure with respect and peace. It was like they were a family, some weird collection of immortal wix from everywhere and every time. It made her miss her own family with something fierce.

“When . . . when can I go back?”

The quartet looked at each other then Booker said, “It’s not recommended.”

“Officially, we can’t stop you,” Joe added, “but . . .”

“Even with magical families, immortality is a hard concept to understand,” Nicky continued.

“Especially with dear Nicolas’ passing,” Joe said.

Nile blinked. “Nicolas Flamel?” she asked. “You knew him?”

“Of course, we taught him at Beauxbatons,” Joe said. “He was, unfortunately for me, terrible at everything outside the alchemy labs.”

Only Nicky and Andy laughed, Andy leaning forward to tell her: “Joe was helping with the Herbology instructor during an upper-level experimentation with Devil’s Snare. Nicolas was . . . a poor student and easily distracted.”

Booker just snorted into his flask, taking another sip as the oldest three continued to laugh.

“How old are _you_ then?” Nile asked, staring Andy down.

There was silence and then Andy said, “Old.” Her eyes were impossibly blue—Nile wondered how many times she stared into the skies, watching them change; how many times she watched the ocean push and pull at the shores of lands that changed every few millennia; how many empires and kingdoms she watched rise and fall.

Nile looked at all of them, unable to really process. Then—“Wait, Beauxbatons? The school?”

“Unless there’s another one,” Joe said.

“Did you teach there for long?” she asked. “Did you teach him?”

Booker laughed, shaking his head at the finger Nile pointed at him. “Not in a classroom,” he said. “Beauxbatons was nothing my family could afford for me. Although, my son and daughter did go for a time.”

“Where else did you teach? Ilvermorny? Hogwarts? Uagadou?” Nile asked.

“We’ve visited, more or less, all the schools when they were young,” Nicky told her. “Except, well, Hogwarts. That . . . was tricky.”

“What do you mean?”

Joe stood up, gesturing for Nile to come with him. Warily, she stood up and followed him, leaving behind her wand, something her old instructor would’ve had her head for. Now that she was immortal . . . did it matter anymore? Did anything matter anymore? But when he opened up a door to a staircase that led to nowhere . . . even that made her pause.

Joe rolled his eyes, amused by her reaction. “If I wanted to kill you, I would push you off the roof. Digging graves is so tiresome.”

Nile flushed and charged down the stairs, successfully goaded.

The basement was full of canvases, most covered by sheets, but a few were blank and uncovered. Joe poked around, looking behind the sheets until he found the one he was looking for. He picked up a covered canvas and placed it on the easel. After a second, making sure Nile was looking at it, he uncovered the canvas.

It was a painting of four people in old robes and cloaks, most likely hundreds of years old. What was strange ( _stranger than three of those people being Joe, Nicky, and Andy with different hair_ ) was that it was a still painting, very uncommon in Wizarding households. But it was obviously Joe, Nicky, and Andy. The fourth person wasn’t Booker, but some Asian woman with a small, fixed smile. 

Behind them, however, was a massive castle still partially unbuilt, one tower fully made while the others were still in the process of being built. Even with the castle a work in process, it looked like . . . 

“Is that . . . is that Hogwarts?” Nile asked, mouth agape, disbelief written on her face.

“It is,” Joe nodded, a small forlorn smile on his face.

Nile turned away and sprinted up the steps, thundering into the kitchen where Booker was giving Nicky a handful of coins. “You’re the _Founders_ of _Hogwarts_?” she demanded.

“Not I,” Booker said, with an asshole-y smirk.

“But you—” she pointed to Nicky, “—and you—” she pointed to Andy, “—and you—” she pointed to Joe who was coming back into the kitchen, sliding into his chair with a better smile. “—you’re the Founders of Hogwarts!”

“Yes, we are,” Nicky said. “Although our protégées are given most of the credit.” Nile collapsed in her chair, burying her face in her hands. “Which painting did you show her?” he asked Joe, feigning obliviousness to Nile’s breakdown.

“Helga’s,” Joe said.

The two men gave Andy a fistful of coins this time.

“Who was the fourth person?” Nile asked, straightening up and looking at Andy.

Andy didn’t answer, she just took her coins and Booker’s flask and left the room. Nile looked at the receding back and then back to the men in the room.

“Her name was Quynh,” Nicky told her. “She was the first immortal Andy found. Together . . . they were unstoppable.”

“Was she the No-Maj one?”

“Yes, but the men who sent her to the bottom of the ocean didn’t believe that,” Joe told her, eyes a furious dark storm. “They saw that she was unable to die and didn’t look beyond that.”

“She . . . what?” Nile asked, reaching up to her throat, unable to imagine being trapped at the bottom of the sea, drowning and living until her immortality . . . wore off or went away.

Slowly, haltingly, Joe and Nicky told her the story of what happened to Quynh, who seemed to be the only _person_ who was ever able to keep up with Andy, No-Maj or wix. At least, until they returned to England to help women escape the witch trials and were caught themselves. That was almost 400 years ago and Quynh was still trapped at the bottom of the ocean, unable to escape an iron casket.

“We have been unable to find her for the past 400 years,” Booker told her, softly as if even mentioning the topic would send the others into a rage. “Even with magical and Muggle advancements . . . it’s proven to be a challenge no one can solve.”

The somber tone managed to linger for the rest of the night, the two men sliding out of the room as Booker flicked his hand to get the dishes to wash themselves. It was just the two of them when Booker spoke up, blue eyes almost looking gray, as he said, “You cannot return home. Not now, not ever again.”

“What are you talking about?” Nile asked, unable to really want to entertain the possibility of her never returning home, back to her mother and brother. “I won’t tell them that—”

“I didn’t tell my family either,” Booker said. “When they did find out, however, it was so bad, I wished my death took. Even wizards wish for immortality and when they find out, they will beg you to share it with them, and you won’t be able to. And they won’t believe you, of course. And they will tell you . . . that you don’t love them. That your love is weak . . . or selfish. And you will never forget the hate and despair in their eyes. And you will know what it is to lose everyone you’ve ever loved.”

Nile just stared at him, at this fucked up Frenchmen who needed way more therapy and way less booze. Then she stood up and walked outside, to the front porch where Andy was sitting on the steps, flask undoubtedly empty on the ground next to her. Nile froze but before she could turn back around, Andy waved her hand, inviting her to sit beside her.

Nile hesitated, then sat down.

There was silence for a moment, then Andy took a breath. “Her name was Quynh,” she said. Her voice was soft, remembering more than just the story of Hogwarts origin, Nile was certain.

“We met Joe and Nicky, together, above a thousand years ago, give or take. They were sick of the desert and we hadn’t seen much of what’s now considered Europe. We, and Joe and Nicky, went there to explore what the mortals were doing. We came across village after village of children with wide-ranging abilities in magic, and most of it was based in Herbology or potions knowledge. Quynh wanted to help them.” Andy paused for a stretch then added, “She always wanted to help.”

There was another stretch of silence then she continued: “We found the largest village we could, then we found the nearest body of water and began to build the castle. Helga and Godric, they were siblings, came first. They actually lived in Hogsmeade and when they found out what we were doing, they came to help us. Salazar, fleeing the Spaniards, came next. It was Rowena who came last. She had created an earlier version of Floo powder and helped students come to Hogwarts itself.”

Then she fell silent long enough that Nile was comfortable in asking, “So who taught who?”

“Joe taught Helga—they’ve always been the most open-hearted of anyone I’ve ever met. I taught Godric. He was always a stubborn shit, even worse than Booker, and insisted on learning the runes that defended Hogwarts. Later, when Salazar came, Nicky worked with him to make sure that he wouldn’t be hunted down again. Rowena came and studied with Quynh—she wanted to learn everything about how Quynh was able to adapt to use without the use of magic.” There, Andy’s lips twisted and she added, “As if Quynh was somehow lesser for not being able to use a staff, for not being able to use divine.”

“My mother is a No-Maj,” Nile told her. “And she’s the strongest person out there.”

Andy looked at her through the black hair that fell on her forehead, covering up her eyes a little. “I can’t remember what my mother looked like,” she admitted. “Or my sisters. None of them.”

Nile didn’t know how to respond for a moment. She couldn’t ever imagine forgetting what her mother, what her brother looked like. Then, remembering how sometimes she couldn’t draw the exact lines of her father’s jaw or his smile, she said, “Time steals it all away, I guess.”

Andy gave her a bitter laugh, shaking her head ever so slightly. “It’s not what time steals . . . it’s what it leaves behind. Things you can’t forget.”

Nile could only imagine what those were. It seemed too vast, too expansive—not just the whole world before her . . . but all of time as well. 

“I gave up searching for her,” Andy said. “I made Quynh a promise and I broke it.”

In an incredulous moment, Nile almost burst out laughing. There were only four ( _but technically five!_ ) people in the world like her and two of them were hopelessly besotted with each other, two of them were filled with so much fucked up energy, it was choking it. And the last of them was trapped at the bottom of the ocean.

Was she the only sane one here?

“You didn’t break the promise,” Nile said. “You’re going to keep it. And I’m going to help you.” The last half of that declaration surprised Andy, even more than it surprised Nile, but she continued. “This is just like a puzzle, although far more twisted and demented. But when you stare at something too long, you begin to lose sight of it. You just need a fresh pair of eyes on this. You have mine.”

“You wouldn’t be able to—”

“I can do anything,” Nile said, getting to her feet and cracking her back. “And what I can’t do, some cousin of mine probably can. Don’t worry, I’m not telling him the whole story. But he’ll be willing to help, nonetheless.”

Andy looked at her, at the outstretched hand Nile was offering, something achingly soft on her face. It took Nile a moment, then she decided it was probably hope. Hope that she would see Quynh again; hope that she would find the missing Founder; hope that this weird family would be whole again. It was hope that turned this woman, older than most things (probably even the fucking _wheel_ , gods above), soft for the first time in who knew how long. A small part of Nile was still reeling in total disbelief at everything that had happened recently. But a larger part of her couldn’t help but feel a drive, a good, strong drive once Andy took her hand and allowed herself to be pulled up.

Nile had come to England to find her purpose—MACUSA just hadn’t been doing it for her, not as of late—and now, in the weirdest way possible, she did.

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, I got this idea a few days after seeing the TOG like two months ago (four founders, four old guard, pretty self-explanatory) but I let it sit for a while because I've been in a funk. Then I woke up early and decided to work on this and not a paper due tomorrow at 2, so that's great.
> 
> Also, I am aware we lose the great Crusades love story, but it had to happen, sorry. Also also, I was going to make Booker a Muggle (just another thing to feed into his insecurities :) lol) but I went against it because Booker wouldn't betray the gang in this au since the idea of secrecy is so much different for them since it's not just the secret of being immortal, but also magical. So, he hates his existence but is content, more or less, to wallow in it.
> 
> Please leave kind comments down below!


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